Topic: Weather "Page" for Theater View (Read 7902 times)

IlPadrino · « **on:** September 04, 2004, 02:46:00 am »

I put together a rough proof-of-concept for adding a weather "page" to the Theater View. It looks something like this:

The way it works is this: Weather.com publishes a Weather XML Data Feed which returns a real time forecast in XML. Using some javascript, I set a ZipCode variable and the Data Feed login parameters and then I perform an XSLT transformation against the XML feed to make it into "pretty" HTML (well, perhaps not so pretty - I'm not much of a webdesigner!)

This makes it fairly easy to customize: you just need to change the ZipCode variable and use whatever XSLT you prefer to generate the appropriate HTML.

I'm having a little problem getting the Javascript to work right. And the darn IE doesn't display transparent PNGs properly (so much for letting Microsoft lead the way towards a standard!). But it there's an interest, I can fix these problems. Otherwise, it's working good enough for my own needs.

Michel Lefebvre · « **Reply #1 on:** September 04, 2004, 08:17:02 am »

Very cool!

This is one of the features that MyHTPC has that I was really missing in MC.

Any chance that one could enter a Canadian location? We don't use Postal Codes instead of Zip Codes as in the US and Weather.com does not accept them. But one can enter the city name and weather.com will provide the appropriate forecast.

I'm not sure if their weather.xml file contains data for locations outside the U.S...

M.

AnalogRoaming · « **Reply #2 on:** September 04, 2004, 09:59:15 am »

If they don't, you could
1. create a weather button and point it to wunderground.com (no popus)
2. create a weather button and point it to your own customized parser. I'm planning to write one anyway.

cncb · « **Reply #3 on:** September 04, 2004, 10:00:21 am »

This is great. I was thinking about the exact same thing (the difference being I didn't really know how to do it). Would you consider sharing?

It would be cool if we could add buttons to the left side of Theater View so that we could switch to a 4-day forecast within this page, for example, instead of having to add another button to the Theater View "Home" page.

JimH · « **Reply #4 on:** September 04, 2004, 10:03:18 am »

Nice, Scott. Thanks. We'll try to support this type of development as we have time.

IlPadrino · « **Reply #5 on:** September 04, 2004, 10:16:13 am »

Quote from: AnalogRoaming on September 04, 2004, 09:59:15 am

If they don't, you could
1. create a weather button and point it to wunderground.com (no popus)
2. create a weather button and point it to your own customized parser. I'm planning to write one anyway.

Yeah... there are plenty of of websites that give you weather, but I couldn't find any that were suitable for a 10-foot interface (i..e Theater View). So I decided to find an XML feed and transform it into HTML myself.

What sort of parser are you planning to write?

IlPadrino · « **Reply #6 on:** September 04, 2004, 10:22:31 am »

Quote from: michel Lefebvre on September 04, 2004, 08:17:02 am

But one can enter the city name and weather.com will provide the appropriate forecast.

I'm not sure if their weather.xml file contains data for locations outside the U.S...

Weather.com has a search function for their XML feed. Use a URL similar to
http://xoap.weather.com/search/search?where=montreal and you'll see a return of

Code: [Select]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!--This document is intended only for use by authorized licensees of The Weather Channel. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Copyright 1995-2004, The Weather Channel Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.-->
<search ver="2.0">
  <loc id="CAXX0301" type="1">Montreal, Canada</loc>
  <loc id="USMO0602" type="1">Montreal, MO</loc>
  <loc id="USWI0466" type="1">Montreal, WI</loc>
</search>

Where you see the LocID variable in my WeatherFeel.htm, just set it to the appropriate "id" (i.e. CAXX0301 for Montreal).

IlPadrino · « **Reply #7 on:** September 04, 2004, 10:24:58 am »

Quote from: cncb on September 04, 2004, 10:00:21 am

This is great. I was thinking about the exact same thing (the difference being I didn't really know how to do it). Would you consider sharing?

It would be cool if we could add buttons to the left side of Theater View so that we could switch to a 4-day forecast within this page, for example, instead of having to add another button to the Theater View "Home" page.

~~The extended forecast should appear at the bottom of the page... but for some reason that I haven't yet figured out, the Javascript isn't properly executing tbat part of my XSLT.~~

However, you've hit on a suggestion I made, too. It would be nice if we could have a way to put the customizable content into a tree. Considering that View Schemes are now the way to customize the tree in Theater View, might it make sense to let users add a View Scheme to Theater View for their personalized content?

IlPadrino · « **Reply #8 on:** September 04, 2004, 10:32:02 am »

Quote from: JimH on September 04, 2004, 10:03:18 am

Nice, Scott. Thanks. We'll try to support this type of development as we have time.

That's the beauty of this... it doesn't really require any development support. It's nothing more than a client-side (i.e. web browser) way of generating your own dynamic HTML. I first thought of just doing this on my own IIS server, but figured it would be better to do it client-side so anyone could use it. There are also plenty of third-party server-side ways of getting a weather report. Take a look at http://pages.sbcglobal.net/scottraymond/WeatherFeed2.htm which is nothing more than the following simple HTML:

Code: [Select]

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<script src='http://voap.weather.com/weather/oap/93933?template=GENXV&par=null&unit=0&key=d2417f2db5c8ad4b0ffb745bbfb07ca4'></script>
</html>

But. as I mentioned in a previous post, I couldn't find any sources that gave a nice 10-foot interface.

IlPadrino · « **Reply #9 on:** September 04, 2004, 10:35:27 am »

OK... sorry for all these posts. But I have a request:

Is anyone willing to develop a better template of what they think this should look like? I'm not terribly artistic... I"m sure someone could do a better job. Just send me an HTML template (if you can, please use an external CSS so that it's easier for people to customize) and I'll do the XSLT that make the data feed look like your template.

IlPadrino · « **Reply #10 on:** September 04, 2004, 12:27:06 pm »

Alright, then... I fixed the problem with IE and transparent PNGs (if anyone's interested, I found a nice javascript that sort of fixes this). I also got the extended stuff working. So if anyone wants to play with this, unzip WeatherFeedWithIconPack.zip to a directory and add an item to the Theater View that points to the WeatherFeed.htm.

For now feel free to use my partner id and license key, but I'm not sure if Weather.com will balk after a while. You can always get your own partner id and key for free by visiting http://www.weather.com/services/xmloap.html.

Oh... and to customize your location, edit the WeatherFeed.htm with notepad and change LocID to the proper value:

Code: [Select]

function GenerateWeather() {
   var LocID = "93933"

Unless someone wants to help with the graphical layout of the HTML, I'm not sure I'll do any more with this...

Scott-

AnalogRoaming · « **Reply #11 on:** September 04, 2004, 12:30:21 pm »

One of us could build this in php or asp, and j River could host it

If you use a local CSS style (haven't figured this out yet) then you could have it match the theme.

I plan to do my parsing in ASP and host it on my web server. However, I don't know how many people I can support if I do that because I know that it would cost $$$ in bandwidth.

IlPadrino · « **Reply #12 on:** September 04, 2004, 12:55:52 pm »

Quote from: AnalogRoaming on September 04, 2004, 12:30:21 pm

One of us could build this in php or asp, and j River could host it If you use a local CSS style (haven't figured this out yet) then you could have it match the theme.

I plan to do my parsing in ASP and host it on my web server. However, I don't know how many people I can support if I do that because I know that it would cost $$$ in bandwidth.

If you use the XML Data Feed and XSLT, there is no need for a server-side solution - assuming that Weather.com's XML Data Feed doesn't balk that the requests come from many different IPs.

You were thinking of scraping the wonderground.com's HTML and then transforming it into HTML suited for a 10-foot interface? That seems like a lot of work... is it because you want wonderground's forecasts instead of Weather.com?

AnalogRoaming · « **Reply #13 on:** September 04, 2004, 02:29:35 pm »

Yeh I know I can do it with XSLT, but I am not a big fan of how Microsoft's XSLT parser works in their browser.

Definitely not planning on screen-scraping wunderground.

NWS also has a feed that we use for the website where I work. We do server-side translation of that feed and I may be able to just adapt that.

I'll probably try both, but what I really want is an RSS aggregator built-in to MC so I can pull feeds that way. There's lots of weather feeds in RSS with images already attached, and that would be the best solution.

JimH · « **Reply #14 on:** September 04, 2004, 02:56:04 pm »

www.noaa.gov might have something you can use. It's a U.S. Federal site. Here's an example:

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/data/current_obs/

AnalogRoaming · « **Reply #15 on:** September 04, 2004, 03:48:23 pm »

JimH:
Yep, that's exactly the one I was referring to. So now I just have to find a good RSS aggregator that works well with MC. http://www.bloglines.com is great but it doesn't quite look right.

IlPadrino · « **Reply #16 on:** September 04, 2004, 04:42:52 pm »

Quote from: JimH on September 04, 2004, 02:56:04 pm

www.noaa.gov might have something you can use. It's a U.S. Federal site. Here's an example:

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/data/current_obs/

I thought of NOAA, but decided Weather.com's world-wide forecasting would be more useful to MC users.

IlPadrino · « **Reply #17 on:** September 04, 2004, 04:55:33 pm »

Quote from: AnalogRoaming on September 04, 2004, 02:29:35 pm

Yeh I know I can do it with XSLT, but I am not a big fan of how Microsoft's XSLT parser works in their browser.

What in particular do you find wrong with MSXML4?

Quote from: AnalogRoaming on September 04, 2004, 02:29:35 pm

I'll probably try both, but what I really want is an RSS aggregator built-in to MC so I can pull feeds that way. There's lots of weather feeds in RSS with images already attached, and that would be the best solution.

Attached images are nice, but don't you think it's better to be able to choose your own weather graphics? That's another reason I liked Weather.com - there are some icon packs you can download to customize the icons.

For other uses, I agree an RSS aggregator built into MC would be interesting - but the feeds still need to be transformed into something visually pleasing. The two RSS aggregators I'm familiar with (NewsGator and FeedDemon) both use XSLT templates for transforming the RSS. Newsgator even has a 10-foot interface for MCE and SnapStream (see http://services.newsgator.com/ProdInfo_mce.aspx)

I could have chosen to transform an RSS feed instead of Weather.com's XML Data Feed... but I'm not sure there's any benefit. Instead of using an RSS aggregator I can just use Javascript to pull down the specific feeds.

Michel Lefebvre · « **Reply #18 on:** September 05, 2004, 11:33:49 am »

Quote from: IlPadrino on September 04, 2004, 12:27:06 pm

Alright, then... I fixed the problem with IE and transparent PNGs (if anyone's interested, I found a nice javascript that sort of fixes this). I also got the extended stuff working. So if anyone wants to play with this, unzip http://pages.sbcglobal.net/scottraymond/Weather.zip to a directory and add an item to the Theater View that points to the WeatherFeed.htm.

Being a "Theater View Newbie", how do I add an item to the Theater View?

Thanks.

M.

IlPadrino · « **Reply #19 on:** September 05, 2004, 11:43:06 am »

Quote from: michel Lefebvre on September 05, 2004, 11:33:49 am

Being a "Theater View Newbie", how do I add an item to the Theater View?

Thanks.

M.

Configure Theater View (either from "Tools -> Options -> Tree & View -> Theater View" or right-click when in Theater View and choose "Configure Theater View") and then under "Items to Show" click on "Add" then choose "custom item". The rest should be self-explanatory.

Michel Lefebvre · « **Reply #20 on:** September 05, 2004, 12:02:08 pm »

Quote from: IlPadrino on September 05, 2004, 11:43:06 am

Configure Theater View (either from "Tools -> Options -> Tree & View -> Theater View" or right-click when in Theater View and choose "Configure Theater View") and then under "Items to Show" click on "Add" then choose "custom item". The rest should be self-explanatory.

Thanks - I should have found that before LOL!

But for some reason, when I try that, I get "An unsupported operation was attempted".

Is it because I'm running 11.0.72 instead of 11.0.76?

M.

Neville · « **Reply #21 on:** September 05, 2004, 12:04:27 pm »

How can I see Celsius instead of Fahrenheit?

IlPadrino · « **Reply #22 on:** September 05, 2004, 12:21:23 pm »

Quote from: michel Lefebvre on September 05, 2004, 12:02:08 pm

Quote from: IlPadrino on September 05, 2004, 11:43:06 am

Configure Theater View (either from "Tools -> Options -> Tree & View -> Theater View" or right-click when in Theater View and choose "Configure Theater View") and then under "Items to Show" click on "Add" then choose "custom item". The rest should be self-explanatory.

Thanks - I should have found that before LOL!

But for some reason, when I try that, I get "An unsupported operation was attempted".

Is it because I'm running 11.0.72 instead of 11.0.76?

M.

Yes... it was broke but seems to work fine in .76

IlPadrino · « **Reply #23 on:** September 05, 2004, 12:28:45 pm »

Quote from: Neville on September 05, 2004, 12:04:27 pm

How can I see Celsius instead of Fahrenheit?

Sorry... I sometimes forget that us "standard" guys number much less than the "metric" guys. I added the paramater to the XML Data Feed that lets you choose between standard or metric. Just download a revised WeatherFeed from here: http://pages.sbcglobal.net/scottraymond/WeatherFeed.htm, making sure it replaces the one in the directory you previously unzipped to. Change the line

Code: [Select]

var units = "s";
to be

Code: [Select]

var units = "m";
And you'll be good to go.

cncb · « **Reply #24 on:** September 05, 2004, 02:13:35 pm »

I'm not able to get this to work in Internet Explorer, XP SP2. It gives me the warning bar at the top and I click to "Allow Active Content" and then I get a blank page. When I refresh, I see "Error On Page" in the status bar briefly. I have only opened the .htm file in Notepad and changed the zipcode. Any ideas? Thanks.

AnalogRoaming · « **Reply #25 on:** September 05, 2004, 03:01:09 pm »

heheh, that's another reason why I'm doing mine server-side. Gotta love the IE. It's too bad JRiver can't get the Firefox browser embedded in there... but I've done Windows programming and it's SOOOO easy to just drop in an IE object, so I completely understand why they did that.

Look in your IE options under Security for a setting to allow you to run active content from CDs and local disks. I don't have SP2 on this machine here but I did run into this at work on Friday and there is a setting similar to that that did fix our problem.

See here for more info.
http://www.phdcc.com/xpsp2.htm

IlPadrino · « **Reply #26 on:** September 05, 2004, 03:04:45 pm »

Quote from: cncb on September 05, 2004, 02:13:35 pm

I'm not able to get this to work in Internet Explorer, XP SP2. It gives me the warning bar at the top and I click to "Allow Active Content" and then I get a blank page. When I refresh, I see "Error On Page" in the status bar briefly. I have only opened the .htm file in Notepad and changed the zipcode. Any ideas? Thanks.

I get the same active content warning when using IE6 directly, but not from within MC. However, simply accepting to run the active content works OK. You should also be able to refresh and avoid having to accept the active content a second time.

You're opening directly in IE6, right? Are you sure that the GenerateWeatherHTML.xsl file is in the same directory as the WeatherFeed.htm?

It's a very simple .htm: It opens the .xsl and it gets the feed from a URL that's generated with the variables. The it applies the transformation and puts the result back into the same window. Try visiting the Weather XML Data Feed directly by using a URL similar to xoap.weather.com/weather/local/93933?cc=*&dayf=2&prod=xoap&par=1005860981&key=110cf3973f6a4091

If you can get the data feed by visiting the URL directly and you're sure that the GenerateWeatherHTML.xsl is in the same directory, feel free to email me at scottraymond@sbcglobal.net and I'll give you a script with some "alerts" that should help in debugging.

IlPadrino · « **Reply #27 on:** September 05, 2004, 03:16:06 pm »

Quote from: AnalogRoaming on September 05, 2004, 03:01:09 pm

heheh, that's another reason why I'm doing mine server-side. Gotta love the IE. It's too bad JRiver can't get the Firefox browser embedded in there...

.
.
.

See here for more info.
http://www.phdcc.com/xpsp2.htm

Granted, I don't like IE any more than you do... but if anything, Microsoft's client-side MSXML is better than Firefox's TransforMiiX.

That's an interesting link you posted.... I had never heard of "Mark of the Web" before. I tried inserting the comment into the .htm, but it seemed to have no effect. Have you gotten them to work?

cncb · « **Reply #28 on:** September 05, 2004, 03:22:05 pm »

Ok, I was able to double-click the error icon and it looks like it couldn't create the "Msxml2.XSLTemplate.4.0" object. I'm surprised that MSXML hasn't been installed somewhere along the way. I guess I have to install this manually.

IlPadrino · « **Reply #29 on:** September 05, 2004, 03:27:08 pm »

Quote from: cncb on September 05, 2004, 03:22:05 pm

Ok, I was able to double-click the error icon and it looks like it couldn't create the "Msxml2.XSLTemplate.4.0" object. I'm surprised that MSXML hasn't been installed somewhere along the way. I guess I have to install this manually.

Visit the URL http://www.bayes.co.uk/xml/index.xml?/xml/utils/msxml_sniffer.htm to see what's installed. You can download the latest MSXML from http://msdn.microsoft.com/XML/XMLDownloads/default.aspx.

If there's enough demand for this, I should use a more robust manner of checking for parser versions. There's some javascript that does this (called Sarissa), but I haven't played with it yet.

cncb · « **Reply #30 on:** September 05, 2004, 03:47:05 pm »

Thanks for the help. FWIW I have 2 pcs here with XP Home SP2 and they both had version 3.0 of MSXML2. So, I changed the script to create 3.0 objects and set IE to open local active content and it's working very well. Thanks!

IlPadrino · « **Reply #31 on:** September 05, 2004, 08:42:22 pm »

Quote from: cncb on September 05, 2004, 03:47:05 pm

Thanks for the help. FWIW I have 2 pcs here with XP Home SP2 and they both had version 3.0 of MSXML2. So, I changed the script to create 3.0 objects and set IE to open local active content and it's working very well. Thanks!

Thanks for the information. When you opened the WeatherFeed.htm through Theater View, did you see any active content warning? I didn't. Still, it'd be nice if I could figure out AnalogRoaming's "Mark of the Web" suggestion.

If you have any feedback on the presentation, let me know. I also think it's asking too much for users to have to edit the .htm, so the last thing I'll do with this is add a Configuration.xml file that holds just the Data Feed's URL parameters.

cncb · « **Reply #32 on:** September 06, 2004, 09:05:11 am »

I did not get the active content warning from TheaterView but it could not load the page until I changed the security settings to "allow active content in local files" as AnalogRoaming suggested.

I think the presentation is very nice. I use 800x600 for tv out so I had to remove some things and change font sizes for it to fit on 1 page but this was very easy the way you have it set up with a style sheet, etc. On a side note, it would nice if they would allow us to give the "browser window" the focus with a right-arrow so that I could scroll vertically with my remote. The only look I changed was the extended forecast text from yellow to white because it was a little hard to see on the gray-ish table background on my display.

I have run into some strange behavior in Internet Explorer. Every once in a while when I open the weather page in TheaterView, one of the "cells" in the extended forecast table is taller than the rest of them. It seems totally random and if I go back and reopen it right away, the problem goes away (they are all vertically the same size). Weird...

IlPadrino · « **Reply #33 on:** September 06, 2004, 10:31:47 am »

Quote from: cncb on September 06, 2004, 09:05:11 am

I have run into some strange behavior in Internet Explorer. Every once in a while when I open the weather page in TheaterView, one of the "cells" in the extended forecast table is taller than the rest of them. It seems totally random and if I go back and reopen it right away, the problem goes away (they are all vertically the same size). Weird...

I think that is probably an artifact of the Javascript "fix" for transparent PNGs in IE. Say what you want about Microsoft and standards, but their unwillingness to fix this often-lamented bug is a great example of the danger behind letting them lead the way.

If you can find an icon pack of JPGs for Weather.com's data feed, or you have a way of batch converting the PNGs to JPGs, I think you'll find that this goes away.

pipsqueak · « **Reply #34 on:** September 06, 2004, 09:08:06 pm »

i like it...would love to see it integrated into mc11

IlPadrino · « **Reply #35 on:** September 06, 2004, 09:23:50 pm »

Quote from: pipsqueak on September 06, 2004, 09:08:06 pm

i like it...would love to see it integrated into mc11

What do you mean by "integrated"? You can simply download my files and create a new menu item for Theater View that calls the .htm. Later tonight I think I'll make one last change: put the parameters (for zip code, days forecast, units, etc.) in a separate XML file that will make it much easier for people to edit.

pipsqueak · « **Reply #36 on:** September 06, 2004, 09:46:36 pm »

IlPadrino

oops - havent got my head screwed on quite right tonight!

have downloaded the prog and whenever i click it in theater view i get a script error. line 14, character 2, code 0, says automation server cannot create object

any ideas?

thanksl

IlPadrino · « **Reply #37 on:** September 06, 2004, 09:55:39 pm »

Quote from: pipsqueak on September 06, 2004, 09:46:36 pm

IlPadrino

oops - havent got my head screwed on quite right tonight!

have downloaded the prog and whenever i click it in theater view i get a script error. line 14, character 2, code 0, says automation server cannot create object

any ideas?

thanksl

Yup... you probably don't have MSXML4 installed. Either look for an above post that gives a link for verifying which versions of MSXML are installed (and a link for installing the latest version), or wait a few hours and I should have a browser&version-agnostic javascript for doing all this work.

You could also try just running it from outside of MC... and make sure IE is set to run local pages (AnalogRoaming gave some guidance in an above post).

Scott-

pipsqueak · « **Reply #38 on:** September 06, 2004, 10:08:41 pm »

scott

it was the msxml that i was missing, thanks for pointing that out. everything works fine now.

the only issue now is that its forcast to rain here (NYC) for the next 5 days solid - i'd have rather not have known!

by the way - excellent work

pip

[edit: the screen falls off the bottom of my page (slightly) can i fix this easily?]

IlPadrino · « **Reply #39 on:** September 06, 2004, 11:26:58 pm »

Quote from: pipsqueak on September 06, 2004, 10:08:41 pm

scott

it was the msxml that i was missing, thanks for pointing that out. everything works fine now.

the only issue now is that its forcast to rain here (NYC) for the next 5 days solid - i'd have rather not have known!

by the way - excellent work

pip

[edit: the screen falls off the bottom of my page (slightly) can i fix this easily?]

I used an external css to help people more easily modify the presentation. CSS drives me crazy, so I'll admit that I probably didn't do a very good job. You can try changing the font size, but what I (or someone else who volunteers) should do is pick a resolution (say 500 pixels high) and then set up the tables so that the row heights are fixed in pixels and the fonts are set in pixels instead of points.

IlPadrino · « **Reply #40 on:** September 07, 2004, 12:55:53 am »

I've summarized this thread and posted it the Third Party forum. Please post any comments, problems, or suggestions there: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=5;action=display;threadid=23436

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Weather "Page" for Theater View (Read 7902 times)